Re: [Linux-fbdev-devel] How to mmap a shadow framebuffer in virtual memory

[Geert Uytterhoeven <Geert.Uytterhoeven@sonycom.com>]

On Sun, 14 Jan 2007, Bernardo Innocenti wrote:
> This is driving me crazy.  I wrote this custom fb driver for an
> organic LED display for an embedded ARM system.
> 
> The display is connected trough an I2C bus, therefore the display
> buffer is not memory mapped.
> 
> Anyway, I want to support mmap() and my driver allocates shadow
> buffer with __get_free_pages() which gets periodically copied
> to the display by a thread. This is unlike most fb drivers which
> just point smem_start to the phisical address of their framebuffer.
> 
> >From user space, opening /dev/fb0 and writing to it works just
> fine.  mmap()'ing the file and writing to it does not have any
> effect.
> 
> Writing the phisical address in smem_start and letting the
> fbgen code do the rest didn't seem to work, so I reimplemented
> the fb_mmap hook.
> 
> I don't feel confident with the Linux VM, so I tried several
> strategies to allocate the shadow buffer, including vmalloc()
> and kmalloc().
> 
> The virtual framebuffer (vfb) also uses vmalloc() but crashes
> calling processes because it confuses physical and virtual
> addresses, or so it seems.
> 
> Maybe it's just my kernel or my platform... does anybody use
> a similar technique?  Can anybody point me to known-good code
> that approximates my needs?

It's known to work for the PS3 frame buffer device driver, which copies the
virtual frame buffer to the GPU on every vsync. Check out ps3fb_mmap() in
http://www.kernel.org/git/?p=linux/kernel/git/geoff/ps3-linux.git;a=blob_plain;f=drivers/video/ps3fb.c;hb=HEAD

Gr{oetje,eeting}s,

						Geert

--
Geert Uytterhoeven -- Sony Network and Software Technology Center Europe (NSCE)
Geert.Uytterhoeven@sonycom.com ------- The Corporate Village, Da Vincilaan 7-D1
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